What about the Dune universe?

innersphere woul dbe a sweet mmo with companies and such as the "guilds"
have mercenaries houses
balancing would be hard but it would be xick if done right

dune i read the first book but i didnt really get it that well

BattleTech would be a pretty good basis for an MMO. One things that's difficult about MMOs, though, is that they're often broken down into numbers, using the WoW and GW scheme of skills working like cards in a TCG. Now, all games at their most basic levels are numbers, but in an FPS or other "immersing experience" there are so many calculations it just blurs together. With the MechWarrior PC games and the Classic BattleTech miniature game I always felt there was a very realistic "calculating" feel to it. You're always making sure you're firing in time with your weapons to maintain heat, and movement always felt like a game of angles to me. Maybe some of these elements would lend BattleTech more to the MMO genre.

There's nothing wrong with the MMO as a concept. You can do it well and you can do it badly.

Battletech is probably one of the better universes to work with because you can deal with conquest, trade and political intrigue, instead of loot, dungeons, loot, broken PvP and loot. It won't work if you have players running the factions directly though.

I would love to see something like that start around the 3rd Succession War and build towards the Clans.  That way you would get a progression of equipment that would keep things somewhat fresh.

ah but see , while the universe is huge , missions are generally not

and just imagine it , you and ur little merc band
trundle off and accept a Draconis combine contract to attack a davion force that is secretely on one of their plannets
contract lasts for 6months (game time, and is quite a short contract)

so u run off to find those nasty davions
you do find them and kill them , but some esscape
so your next mission is to kill the ones that esscaped before they can leave the plannet
but ! they manage to get a transmission out to call for renforcements
who rock up , just as you waist the last survivors, face with a new threat you retreat to the nearest DRAC city
the the davions dont let up, and attack the city
dracs call for renforcements and so do the davions

and pretty soon , you realise you just started a war
then on the little dirt ball on the edge of the solar system where only about 12 players were in action (including the davions you waisted earler)
now there are hundrends of players rocking up to the planet
then war would spread to the near by plannets and so forth and so forth

i rekon battle tech would be the best mmo out there
cause it would have every possable player class available (like traders, engineers, pilots, infantry, medics, tankers, artillery, aerospace, transport pilots and so on

i would start the game off at the 2nd succession war

that way, the star league is very very gone, and most of the good technology is too
but then you have lots and lots of new content to add , then the clans could invade
new content is almost endless

i think this game tho would be better off left alone for about 20years
then we would have the technology to pull it off correctly

This mmo will be better http://forums.jeuxonline.info/showthread.php?t=870331